I made a thread about Ajattara in the 'old' version of Metal Storm, so decided to make a fresh one now. Ajattara is one of my favourite recent bands. For those unfamiliar with the band, they are from Finland, and all the songtitles and lyrics are in Finnish. They play a kind of Black/Dark Metal, midpaced, melodic and catchy, yet with a sinister atmosphere and crunching riffs alongside atmospheric keyboards.

The songwriting is rather basic, often following a verse/chorus format, and the songs are kept quite short. The vocalist and guitarist is Ruoja, otherwise known as Pasi Koskinen, who used to sing for Amorphis, and is also in a few other bands, including Shape Of Despair.

Ajattara have released 4 albums so far, each of them similar in approach. Apparently they have had big chart success in their homeland of Finland (although Metal in general is quite mainstream there).

So, what do you think of this band?

I think they're pretty good, especially the newer stuff. They seem like the type of band that will get better with time.

This band owns...hard. I love their atmosphere and their overall sound. A big favorite of mine at the moment. I only have Äpäre and Kuolema, but they both slay. Thanks to KryptoN for getting me into them.

I'm really enjoying "Kuolema" at the moment. Outstanding album!
As said, the atmosphere they create is quite special, dark and obscure and also the reason why I like this band so much. Ajattara is not really the same as other Black Metal bands...

combining black with dark is interesting, that's why I don't listen ofet to Ajattara, don't want them to sound daily :

Written by Stigmatized on 17.09.2006 at 07:15

I only have Äpäre and Äpäre, but they both slay.

You "only have Äpäre and Äpäre"..? Well you must like it a lot if you bought it twice...

Äpäre is definitely a strong album, and one of my favourite releases of 2006 so far. All the albums so far are fairly similar in approach, but just different enough to keep things interesting, so it's not like hearing exactly the same thing over again.

Written by Richard on 17.09.2006 at 21:43

Written by Stigmatized on 17.09.2006 at 07:15

I only have Äpäre and Äpäre, but they both slay.

You "only have Äpäre and Äpäre"..? Well you must like it a lot if you bought it twice...

Äpäre is definitely a strong album, and one of my favourite releases of 2006 so far. All the albums so far are fairly similar in approach, but just different enough to keep things interesting, so it's not like hearing exactly the same thing over again.

Whoops! I meant Äpäre and Kuolema. The latter being my favorite.

Well, Ajattara is one of those bands that doesn't change and we're actually glad of it... Äpäre was completely predictable but who cares, it's still their strongest release and like Richard said, one of the best albums of 2006.

Exactly, there are certain bands that establish a signature sound which doesn't need to change too drastically. I think Äpäre has a few little surprises though, a couple of sound effects thrown in and such. But when a band has a winning formula then it's good for them to stick with it, and I don't think Ajattara should ever progress/change too much... Anyway, Pasi Koskinen is free to do other styles and things with the 78 million other bands he plays in, and hopefully keep the essence of Ajattara the same.

Ajattara is awesome! Äpäre is truly one of the best releases this year. I love the heavy and dark riffs, Pasi vocals is good aswell.

Does anyone know anything about this?

According to Wikipedia-

"At the end 2006 Ajattara's long time group broke up, when Pasi Koskinen made (for example) neo-nazi salutes and other same related political statements during the gig. The new line-up is still unknown."

Wikipedia isn't always a reliable source, so I wanted to ask here and see if anyone knew anything.

Written by Stigmatized on 12.02.2007 at 02:55

Does anyone know anything about this?

According to Wikipedia-

"At the end 2006 Ajattara's long time group broke up, when Pasi Koskinen made (for example) neo-nazi salutes and other same related political statements during the gig. The new line-up is still unknown."

Wikipedia isn't always a reliable source, so I wanted to ask here and see if anyone knew anything.

I hadn't heard anything about that until I saw your post, but yeah, that's what it says on Wikipedia - although as you said that's not always reliable. So I did a bit more searching, and all I could find was a post on the Ajattara myspace site (not run by the band), in which there is a statement by an ex-member of the band (this is a loose translation of what was said):

"What happened is that rest of the band handed in their resignation after the Virgin Oil Co. gig. A new line-up will probably be found soon."

So, from that it seems that something dodgy went on, although the only mention on the Internet that I can find of actual "neo-nazi salutes" and such is that bit on wikipedia, which doesn't have any links to verify the information.

The official Ajattara website is down.

I discovered this band some time ago, and I loved it. Now, it's one of my favorite bands, I think they've been able to get their own sound to differetiate them from other bands, and IMO they've done it quite well.

Also, I like the idea of them singing in finnish, I think it's really good, and in my opinion it sounds really great too. For me, this one of the best BM bands there are out there now

Written by Richard on 13.02.2007 at 21:10

Written by Stigmatized on 12.02.2007 at 02:55

Does anyone know anything about this?

According to Wikipedia-

"At the end 2006 Ajattara's long time group broke up, when Pasi Koskinen made (for example) neo-nazi salutes and other same related political statements during the gig. The new line-up is still unknown."

Wikipedia isn't always a reliable source, so I wanted to ask here and see if anyone knew anything.

I hadn't heard anything about that until I saw your post, but yeah, that's what it says on Wikipedia - although as you said that's not always reliable. So I did a bit more searching, and all I could find was a post on the Ajattara myspace site (not run by the band), in which there is a statement by an ex-member of the band (this is a loose translation of what was said):

"What happened is that rest of the band handed in their resignation after the Virgin Oil Co. gig. A new line-up will probably be found soon."

So, from that it seems that something dodgy went on, although the only mention on the Internet that I can find of actual "neo-nazi salutes" and such is that bit on wikipedia, which doesn't have any links to verify the information.

The official Ajattara website is down.

Yeah, something went down. I wish they would have given a little more detail and an official statement about why the lineup left.

I found this band some time ago - a very pleasant surprise...
As someone said, their music is quite catchy, and it still has its black essence
My fav album would probably be Tyhjyys or Kuolema, but they're all rather similar so it's a hard decision

According to their website, they're releasing a new album called "Kalmanto" on 05.09.07. I'm looking forward to it.

I went to the official home page a few months ago to check these guys out, and nothing was in English, so I couldn't find any sound bytes. Is there any (legal) songs or sound bytes on the internet that have English navigation?

I listened to this a long time ago, back then, they was extremely boring to me, but also, I listened to different music then. Now, I tried them again, they are little better than before (in my ears), but still, pretty un influental band for me.

Aww.. sad to hear that from you Aronax . Ajattara has a great sound, and honestly, I have never found another band like that. Unique atmosphere. If anyone knows any similar band, just recommend it to me.

Kuolema is their best album, in my opinion, but the others are not far from being as good as the one previously mentioned. Maybe that's their biggest defect: their albums sound a bit the same. But I still love them.
I had Haureus in my head for at least two weeks. Most of their songs have that catchy melody that always makes you listen to them at leat three times in a row.
Ajattara is definetely one of my favourite bands, and I would recommend it to anyone, and not only to Black Metal fans. It's actually wrong to say they just play Black Metal, it goes far beyond that.

The new album, Kalmanto, sounds completely different from the other ones. Pasi's vocals still sound great, but his voice sounds a bit more raw this time, and he even sings in the song, "...putoan". However, unlike his singing in Amorphis, he doesn't do a good job at all on that one song and it really sticks out in a bad way. Each song sounds completely different from the next, which ruins the flow of the album. That's pretty unusual for this band. It's a good album, but I really don't think it'll have a lasting appeal to me.

All the albums of Ajattara bore me. Think they sound too repetive and clean.

However, I was once in a debate about production values with Ilham. She said that a good production is always good, I said that a bad production can add a lot to the atmosphere. (Or something like that)

As a test, she send me twice the same song, one being very badly produced and one having a good production. It turned out to be a song from the Ajattara demo that has been re-released on some album. I absolutely LOVED the demo version, because of it's raw sound it is so much more atmospheric and catchier. I didn't like the 'good production' song, though I have to admit, it did sound slightly better cause I knew how it was 'supposed' to sound. (All though many shall probably disagree with how music is 'supposed' to sound.)

Their new album has been leaked apparently, and it does seem a bit interesting in the sense that they still want to be black metal, but they are not actually using "electric" instruments, meaning of course that the album is acoustic. Luckily not to the extent of what melodic bands generally have on their acoustic creations. There is still distortion used to make the acoustic sound more like electric. There's also a few folk instruments used throughout the songs. The tempo is varied throughout the album. Naturally there are no huge stompers or hurricanes to be expected here, but there are a few fast paced songs, a few mid paced and also a few slow paced songs.
Upon a few first listens, the songs sounded fairly different from each other, but since I didn't find any official releases of any songs from the album, then it might be better to leave the "descriptions" at this.


My previous experience with Ajattara has been restricted to Kalmanto, which was recommended to me by the fine fellow selling metal CDs at a by-now-closed store. It was a great album when I first heard it, then it got a bit dull after the initial hype faded, but lately I'm listening to a few songs from there again.

Written by Vunts on 15.03.2009 at 14:13

Their new album has been leaked apparently, and it does seem a bit interesting in the sense that they still want to be black metal, but they are not actually using "electric" instruments, meaning of course that the album is acoustic. Luckily not to the extent of what melodic bands generally have on their acoustic creations. There is still distortion used to make the acoustic sound more like electric. There's also a few folk instruments used throughout the songs. The tempo is varied throughout the album. Naturally there are no huge stompers or hurricanes to be expected here, but there are a few fast paced songs, a few mid paced and also a few slow paced songs.
Upon a few first listens, the songs sounded fairly different from each other, but since I didn't find any official releases of any songs from the album, then it might be better to leave the "descriptions" at this.

Ah right! I read that the forthcoming album was going to be acoustic, and I thought that might just be a 'joke' - but if it's been leaked, and people have heard it, and it's been done in the way you said above, then that's fair enough. Such an experimental approach could either be great or embarrassingly poor... Or maybe the whole thing is some kind of hoax!

I found the new acoustic album very disappointing. It's not because of the different style, it's because of what they did with that style. The instruments sound stiff, powerless and out of tune, the vocals are inconsistent (some great material and a lot of fucking abominable shit) and the overall sound is just annoying in general. Moving out of metal to do an album was a decent idea (and quite surprising for a band like Ajattara). However, they almost completely ditched their "sound signatures" and replaced all the metal components with folky acoustic rock so there is very little of anything reminiscent of the rest of their stuff. The only thing "Ajattara" remaining is the certain monotonic darkness that emanates from lots of different elements. One thing I always liked about Ajattara was the lyrical quality (which says a lot since I don't give a shit about lyrics 99% of the time), but the lyrics on this album sucked based on the first listening. I'm all for atmospheric/dark acoustic stuff but this album just doesn't work. Oh, and the first and last tracks are some of the worst songs I've ever heard. No exaggeration.

Well, I don't understand the Finnish lyrics anyway so that's not a problem for me.. It's the sound of the language which I like. I haven't heard all the new album yet, just track 4 (called 'Saatana Palvoo Meitä') which I quite like, based on two listens. It has a kind of tribal feel to it.

I love Ajattara, their dark/black metal it's just awesome, so unique. I have heared all their albums, and the last one, Noitumaa, it's just shit. I can't listen it, sounds horrible IMO. I hope the next album sounds like the others, because their style as I've said it's really good.

I listened to the stuff in their MySpace, and TBH. It scared me a damn lot. It's too dark. Makes me think of creepy scary things... like Clowns wit chainsaws, japanese ghosts, and children with huge knives. Brr.